Artistry
by Lady Kes
Summary: Artists come in many shapes. Abby runs into a few of them on a rare trip to the field. Features Leverage cameos, but you don't have to know Leverage to read.


Title: Artistry  
Fandom: NCIS, with cameos from Leverage  
Rating: Completely G  
Summary: Artistry comes in many forms.  
Disclaimer: NCIS is not mine. Leverage is not mine.

* * *

This case was driving them nuts. All of them, even Jimmy, although that was probably because it was driving Gibbs nuts and when Gibbs got stressed, Ducky got stressed and then everyone was stressed. Stressed was actually a pretty mild term for the current situation, which was probably best described in terms of a newspaper headline, like "Entire Federal Agency Spontaneously Moves to Dubai" or something.

The cause of the stress was the fact that they could not nail the guy they all-but-knew had murdered their Navy Commander and his family. They needed DNA from him to confirm, but he had Fed connections so intricate they looked like a macram plant holder, which meant NCIS couldn't really touch him without starting an interacronym nuclear standoff. As a last ditch effort, Gibbs had sent Abby undercover at a website hosting company the suspect had used. She was supposed to be programming their next server upgrade, but what she was really doing was seeing if there was anything in the onsite logs that was illegal and not covered by his agreements with various parties. If there was, they could at least bring him in on it and go from there.

She'd hacked in pretty easily and was currently looking around while Tim helped her from MTAC. Tony and Ziva were outside in case she got herself into trouble, which mostly meant she had to listen to them bicker about lunch, driving habits, and, of course, movies. She tuned them out while she tried to get through another layer of security. They'd go get burritos anyway.

She glanced up to make sure she hadn't been spotted not working on her official code bits and noticed a blonde woman delivering flowers and maybe taking access cards at the same time, although it was so subtle she probably didn't actually see what she thought she saw. That was interesting, but industrial espionage wasn't her problem. Murder and server logs were.

The next time she glanced up after Tim had pleaded the need to go get more caffeine if he was going to keep hunting for misplaced spaces, there was an electrician wandering through, talking about grounding wires and current phases and pretty much subjecting the stocky executive next to him to a verbal deluge. The executive looked a little irritated behind his gold-rimmed glasses that probably cost as much as three of her paychecks, and NCIS didn't pay badly, either.

The third and last time she glanced up, it was part of grabbing her cloak at the end of the day. There was something in the server logs that hinted at being illegal, but even with Tim's help, she couldn't quite get to it and finish her assigned task, and since this was a temp job, she couldn't come back tomorrow. It was insanely frustrating, but they'd tried, and maybe she could keep working on it at the lab or something.

She passed a sultry Australian woman on her way out. Apparently the Aussie had forgotten her purse and thus her badge in her office, and could the security guard just let her go up this once and get it? Yeah, no question who was going to win that argument. The guard was already moving to push the button to let the other woman in and Abby hid a smile. He'd been played. Totally played and he didn't even know it, much like Tony was being played while Ziva convinced him to let her drive.

"I don't care who drives, but if we don't stop for Caf-Pow, I'm quitting and moving to Dubai," she pronounced as she got in the car.

Late that night, after everyone had gone home, even Tim who hadn't wanted to leave her to hack alone, Abby was still in her lab. She was determined to get the evidence she needed on the scumbag and she had five Caf-Pows with which to do it. Sleep was for after he was in lockup with five hundred of his closest friends.

She started the process of getting through the hosting company's electronic defenses, which were of course much harder to do from the outside. Fortunately, she'd been inside enough to know a possible route and she had all the spare computing power of NCIS hooked in, which she totally wasn't telling Director Vance about. What he didn't know about the electric bill wouldn't hurt him.

She was about halfway through her chosen route when she realized it was easier than it should be. A quick portscan later and she knew why. There was another hacker in the system and he, she, or it (in the case of ECHELON) was maybe looking for the same information Abby was, so they'd unintentionally ended up helping each other. She didn't know why or how, but she wasn't turning it down, so she started moving to intercept the other hacker and use them to help her get further. Sure, it'd help the other hacker get further too, and maybe she should worry about that, but this server hosting company was pretty slimy in general. If this was part of the industrial espionage she'd maybe kind of seen earlier in the day, she was okay with that.

About two hours and more keystrokes than she wanted to count later, she had the information she needed. Their dirtbag apparently also had a thing for kiddie porn, which was guaranteed to get Gibbs from zero to sniper in a parsec. They'd haul him into Interrogation on that and then do the Gibbs grey area dance to get the DNA for their murder case.

Just before she erased her tracks, she sent a message through to the other hacker's desktop. It was a throwaway nick and the message wasn't traceable back to her, obviously, and if the hacker tried they'd end up in a loop around Mulberry, Indiana, but she had appreciated the help, even unintentionally.

Good hacking. See you in 2600. - DeathStrike49

A few seconds later, another untraceable message had come back to her.

Not if I see you first. - CyberArtist42

CyberArtist42? Yeah that was a throwaway nick too, but she hadn't expected less. She'd keep an eye out for this one's signature keystrokes in the future. Could be useful. What was more useful now, though was sleep, and she turned the computer off and headed for the Ballistics lab with Bert. She had four hours before anyone started arriving and she intended to sleep the sleep of a criminal well caught for at least two of them.


End file.
